DA: Nurse charged in fatal drug-swap override safeguard

February 07, 2019 - 8:09 AM

NASHVILLE - A spokesman for the district attorney's office in Davidson County, Tennessee, is explaining why prosecutors have filed criminal charges against a former hospital nurse accused of mistakenly killing a patient. He says it's because she overrode the safeguards on a medicine dispensing cabinet.

The Tennessean reports spokesman Steve Hayslip said Wednesday that former nurse Radonda Leanne Vaught is charged with reckless homicide because she allegedly overrode safeguards at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services investigated the 2017 death. Its report says the nurse was trying to find the drug Versed in the electronic cabinet when she used an override to unlock stronger medications and selected the first drug under 'VE," which was the execution drug vecuronium.